Los Angeles, Oct 15 (IANS) Actor Stephen Graham has got an admirer for his recent performance, and it’s none other than Bruce Springsteen, the guy whose father he plays on screen.
Less than a month after winning his first Emmy for ‘Adolescence’, the British actor has now received high praise from ‘The Boss’, reports ‘Variety’.
Springsteen has hailed his performance in ‘Springsteen: Delivery Me From Nowhere’. Graham plays Bruce’s father Douglas Springsteen in the Searchlight biopic directed by Scott Cooper, starring alongside Jeremy Allen White as the rocker during the making of his 1982 album ‘Nebraska’.
Speaking at a special Q&A at Spotify’s London headquarters with White, Springsteen claimed that Graham “really embodied the physicality and emotional complexity of my father”, with whom he acknowledged he had a deeply complicated relationship.
The Boss said, “He was very troubled, an alcoholic, bipolar and quite mentally ill. Stephen just naturally inhabited his skin and his soul, particularly as an older man, he’s the spitting image of him. Towards the end of the film, you get a sense of my father’s invulnerability and his sweetness”.
As per ‘Variety’, White noted that he learned to play the guitar using a rare 1955 Gibson J200, gifted to him by Springsteen while he prepared for the role.
He said, “That became the guitar in the film. He also admitted to bringing a jump rope to set, having mistakenly thought he’d need it to keep his heart rate up and sweat flowing between takes on the performance scenes.
“For some reason I thought my stamina would be more than Bruce’s. It turns out it was completely unnecessary, that sweat comes naturally, that heart rate gets lifted and the adrenaline gets going. So I didn’t need to use it, Bruce-level energy comes naturally when you’re up there”, he added.
–IANS
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